As it traversed the state of Florida, Hurricane (now tropical depression) Irma left a trail of destruction not seen since Hurricane Andrew hammered the state in 1992. But despite the rising death toll, historic flooding and a ruined power grid that could take weeks to repair, meteorologists say Floridians should consider themselves fortunate.
Because it could’ve been much, much worse.
The National Hurricane Center downgraded Irma to a Tropical Depression late Monday night, but even in its weakened state, the storm continues to cause deadly storm surges and volatile winds as it travels through Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina, flooding downtown Charleston, South Carolina and uprooting trees in Atlanta, according to CNN.
Meanwhile, authorities have confirmed 11 deaths from the storm.
Around 12:06 p.m EDT on Sept 10, 2017, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured an image of the sun unleashing a massive solar flare from a recently active region. Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation. Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth's atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground, however — when intense enough — they can disturb the atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communications signals travel. Per NASA,
A few weeks ago we highlighted an 'inconvenient fact' for the publicly traded electric car manufacturers and the environmentally-conscious Left, namely that, according to Morgan Stanley, electric cars generate more CO2 than they save. As a stark reminder to our left-leaning political elites who created these companies with massive taxpayer funded subsidies in the United States, Morgan Stanley pointed out that while electric cars don't burn gasoline they do have to be charged using electricity generated by coal and other fossil fuels.
While Hurricane Irma, which was reclassified as a tropical storm early Monday, spared Miami from a "worst case" scenario, the former hurricane saved some of its worst storm surge impacts for northeast Florida, coastal Georgia, and South Carolina.